I feel compelled to respond to Rick Devore’s Feb. 28 letter, “Ponder gun objective.”

First, it is insulting to every gun owner to say that they have no sympathy for those people, mostly children, who were murdered in a Connecticut elementary school in December.

All of America, gun owners and non-gun owners alike, were appalled by that heinous crime.

Devore says gun owners have tried to pervert the meaning of the Constitution. Here is the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What part of that does he not understand?

Devore also insinuated that gun owners had gone so far as to make up quotes from the Founding Fathers. Here are a few quotes from the Founding Fathers:

George Washington said, “Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance.”

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Constitution, said, “No freeman shall be debarred of the use of arms, the constitution of most of our states assert that power is inherent in the people, that . . . it is their right and duty to be armed at all times.”

Samuel Adams stated, “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”

That was a few; there are many more.

Devore brought up Adolf Hitler and the 1938 German Weapons Act, so I looked it up. Devore says it is similar to our gun laws today.

It is not similar to our laws. When you can restrict a whole nationality of people, it is not the same.

The law stated you had to be a special citizen to own guns. Jews were excluded, as well as everyone else who disagreed with the Nazis.

Basically, you had to be a Nazi sympathizer.

That is not even close to our gun laws.

Devore ended his letter pondering whether America’s gun radicals need all the weaponry to fight the hypothetical tyrannical regime. Devore needs to remember that at one time Castro in Cuba, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Germany, and Mao in China were once hypothetical tyrannical regimes.

Here are some of the names of people who advocated for the right to bear arms: Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Some of the advocates for gun control were Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Castro — and now President Barack Obama.

Devore also needs to remember that if anyone is allowed to subvert and water down the meaning of the Second Amendment, maybe next they will go after the First Amendment. Then Devore might not be able to write letters to the editor any more — because there might not be a newspaper in which to print them.